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| View Currently Running Process List SUMMARY: Help determine if spyware or adware are currently running on your machine using Spybot Search and Destroy.
To help determine if spyware or adware is running on your system, Spybot Search and Destroy lets you view the currently running process list, displaying currently-running executables and more.
1. Click "Mode", selecting "Advanced Mode".
2. Click "Tools" in the left pane.
3. Click "Process List" in the right pane.
The displayed information includes:
* Process - The executable name of each process.
* PID - The process ID
* Parent - The PID of the process' parent.
* Threads - The number of threads created by each process.
* Path - The file path to the particular process.
When you click on a process, the bottom panel shows all objects instantiated by the process such as DLL and OCX files. Each object filename is shown along with an ID, process ID of the calling process, and file path to the object. Right-click an object and choose "Show file in Explorer" if you want to further investigate the object file.
This list displays some information Windows 2000 and Windows XP's task manager does not display, but it does not display other information found in the operating system task manager such as the user name running each process plus the CPU usage for each process. However, two handy features are available in Spybot:
* To kill a running process, click a process then the "Kill process" button. Exercise caution! Killing the wrong process may cause you to lose saved data or crash the operating system.
* To export the list of processes to a text file so you can potentially give it to a computer professional to ask them whether or not certain processes are legitimate or spyware, click the "Export" button and give the log file a name.
* To view a process' executable file in an Explorer window, right-click a process and choose "Show file in Explorer".
* To copy the list of running processes to the clipboard for later review, right-click any process and choose "Copy to clipboard".
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